It’s All Good Man: Understanding the Transformation of Jimmy McGill
Warning: Contains spoilers for AMC’s Better Call Saul
As a Breaking Bad fanatic, I was thrilled to learn that Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould were creating a prequel for the show. However, I was initially skeptical about their idea of having the prequel explore Saul Goodman’s background and his journey to become Walter White’s attorney and chief money launderer. Five seasons in, I admit I was utterly wrong to question them for even one second. Saul Goodman, introduced as Jimmy McGill in the show’s first four seasons, is more than just a scam artist who wears colorful suits and weird patterned ties. His character is much more complex than that, and it is only by delving into his abundant past life experiences and complex relationships that we understand why he decided to abandon Jimmy and become Saul. Therefore, it makes sense to have him as the star of the Breaking Bad spin-off.
Season Five kicks off with Jimmy McGill getting reinstated as a lawyer and officially changing his practicing name to Saul Goodman. He justifies that by telling Kim, “Jimmy McGill will always be associated with being Chuck McGill’s loser brother.” He’s not wrong about that. Going back to the earlier seasons, Chuck McGill constantly undermined Jimmy and refused to allow him to grow as a lawyer.
To give you a little background about Chuck, he is a prodigy who graduated valedictorian of his class at the age of fourteen and attended the University of Pennsylvania, followed by Georgetown’s Law school. He then co-founded Hamlin Hamlin & McGill (HHM) and turned it into the most prestigious law firm in Albuquerque. Despite being the co-founder of HHM, Chuck hires Jimmy as a mailroom clerk and sabotages every opportunity he has to practice law. In his mind, Jimmy is still his younger brother, who always gets into trouble and never works hard for anything in his life.
Throughout the first three seasons, Chuck makes it clear that for anyone to be in his league, that person must have been valedictorian, graduated from an Ivy League school, and never get into trouble with the law. Therefore, no matter how hard Jimmy tries, he will never tick all three boxes and will always be haunted by his past. As expected, the relationship between the two continues to deteriorate. It culminates with Chuck insulting Jimmy by calling him a fake lawyer, a joke, and a chimp with a machine gun. At one point, he yells, “I know you. I know what you were, what you are. People don’t change. You’re Slippin’ Jimmy.”
Consequently, Jimmy’s contentious relationship with his brother and society’s refusal to take him seriously because of his colorful personality drives him to question his life trajectory. Bob Odenkirk, the actor who plays Jimmy, sums it up perfectly when he explains that his character is trying to take back the world. Saul yells, “You’re never going to get me again. You’re never going to get me trying to be good again. Because I never win when I try to do the right thing.”
Jimmy wants the world to know that he is now Saul Goodman. Even though he changes his name in court, he still fights an inner battle between his desire to scam people and his attempts to be a good man. At first, he settles for “low-level” scams, such as selling burner phones to criminals and encouraging them to commit crimes by promising to be their lawyer and offering them 50% off his services. He then takes it up a notch and threatens to blackmail the CEO of another law firm, using materials he obtained illegally, by airing a hilarious commercial that depicts the firm as a money-grabbing institution and one that commits copyright infringements.
However, Jimmy’s point of no return finally arrives when he gets involved, albeit reluctantly at first, with the Mexican drug cartel. His behavior and actions eventually drove him to people who do not accept no for an answer. Therefore, he agrees to represent a Mexican drug lord in court and undertake a dangerous journey, in which he barely survives, to the southern borders to collect eight million dollars of cash in bail money. We see Jimmy as a changed man in the last two episodes of Season Five, as he has PTSD from his adventure and feels anxious about what the future holds.
As was the case in Breaking Bad, the cinematography in Better Call Saul perfectly captures Jimmy’s transformation and sets the mood throughout the episodes of Season Five. There are many examples of breathtaking cinematography techniques that I will write about in another Medium post. Still, one powerful image I felt necessary to point out is the zoom shot of Jimmy’s ice cream ball as it melts at the edge of the sidewalk and gets swarmed by hundreds of ants. The image perfectly symbolizes Jimmy’s character slowly getting eaten away, one piece at a time.
Mike Ehrmantraut, another complex character in the show who takes on the role of a cleaner, security guard, fixer, and hitman, summarizes Jimmy’s transformation perfectly in one of their conversations. He says, “We all make our choices, and those choices put us on a road. And sometimes those choices seem small but they put you on the road. You think about getting off but eventually, you’re back on it.” Jimmy’s life experiences, relationships, and struggles presented him with choices, and he made the choice that put him on the road to Saul Goodman.